Bullies 'more likely to be bad mothers'

Schoolgirl bullies are more likely to make bad mothers and batter their partners, an expert said today.

Aggressive girls were just as much in need of understanding and help as their male "teenage hoodie" counterparts, a psychiatric conference heard.

Sue Bailey, professor of forensic child and adolescent psychiatry at the University of Central Lancashire, said a relatively small number of girls offended but the impact on society was often high.

She told the annual meeting of the Royal College of Psychiatrists in Glasgow: "Some girls are temperamentally overactive as toddlers and pre-schoolers but it is at puberty that girls begin to engage in bullying, often as targets as well as perpetrators."

Disruptive girls were at risk of being rejected by peers and struggling at school as well as becoming teenage mothers with anti-social partners, often in violent relationships, she said.

As mothers, they were "prone to maternal irritability and harsh parenting, interpreting normal infant behaviour as being intentionally hostile," she said.

"And children of young mothers with histories of girlhood aggression may be more prone to infection and injuries," she added.

Prof Bailey called for a better psychiatric understanding of girls' aggression.

She said: "How exactly does 'girl talk' ignite into hurtful, interpersonal aggression and how does that aggression lead to some girls becoming physically violent towards their peers, adults and romantic partners?"

She said intervention to change the lives of the next generation of potentially aggressive children should begin even before they were born.

She recommended pre-natal programmes directed at high-risk expectant mothers, especially those who were young and have been disruptive as children, to improve their parenting skills and break the familial cycle of aggression.